Henri and Remi, the two French guys staying in the apartment this week and next, wanted to watch my “CNN Remembers” documentary video about 9/11 this evening, so we did. Naturally, one of the scenes it showed was the famous video by Jules and Gedeon Naudet of the first plane hitting the first tower, the only video in existence of that initial impact.

I’ve seen that clip plenty of times before — but when I watched it tonight, it was like seeing it with new eyes. With a sudden jolt in my stomach, I recognized the very spot where the cameraman was standing: on Church Street in Tribeca, about two blocks north of where I now work. I recognized it because of the AT&T building on the right-hand side of the screen — the large, distinctive building right next to the subway exit that I emerge from every morning.

This page confirms: the video was shot at the corner of Church and Lispenard, two and a half blocks north of the front entrance of my workplace. If I were to watch the video closely, I would probably be able to spot the 18-story building where I work. It would be on the left-hand side of the screen for a split second before the cameraman zooms in on the plane impact.

What struck me immediately about the video was how immense the Twin Towers appeared from that location. Of course I should have realized this, but somehow, looking south from my office to the vacant spot where the WTC once stood, I didn’t picture them as that big, that close by. But they were close — they practically filled the whole sky.

It must have been an incredible view from my office before 9/11 — and a horrible view on 9/11.

Wow.

Yeah, I know, I’m always posting pictures of the George Washington Bridge. But I can’t help it! It’s really pretty, and it’s right near where I live! :)

It’s too soon to say for sure — and it’s just my perception, not an official Hurricane Center bulletin — but looking at the satellite loop on the Weather Channel just now, it appeared to me that Hurricane Fabian is accelerating and turning due north more quickly and sharply than expected.

It’s due south of Bermuda now, so that might not sound like good news. But if the fast-recurvature trend continues, it can be expected now to begin moving slightly east of north, and then more and more east of north… and maybe it will miss Bermuda by enough of a wide margin that it won’t be too devastating.

Also, it appears on satellite to be weakening a bit. But the Weather Channel forecaster said a reconaissance aircraft had just measured a dropping barometric pressure and 125 mile-per-hour winds, so who knows?

I’m selling a copy of the Los Angeles Times Shuttle Columbia disaster issue on eBay. (I have two copies.) No bids yet.

Hurricane Warnings are up for Bermuda as Hurricane Fabian — still at 120 mph, with a chance to strengthen before it rolls past the island tomorrow — approaches. “Fabian is a large and dangerous hurricane,” the National Hurricane Center warns. “Preparations to protect life and property on Bermuda should be rushed to completion.”

“The weather should begin to deteriorate in Bermuda during the next 6 hours or so,” the NHC says in its 5:00 PM discussion. “Tropical storm force winds should begin to affect Bermuda by sunrise Friday.”

The core of the storm is expected to be “near or over” the island “late Friday,” according to the Hurricane Center. Even if the eye doesn’t hit the island, the impact will still be serious, because “Fabian is not only a severe but a large hurricane. A reconnaissance plane measured…hurricane force winds extending out to about 100 [nautical miles] to the northeast of the center.”

UPDATE: For local coverage, check out Bermuda’s Royal Gazette. The top story, Bermuda braces for the big one, declares, “Hurricane Fabian could be the worst to ever hit the Island.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Sharkoil.bm is a local Bermuda weather site with, of course, updated information on Fabian. Also, there’s the official Bermuda Weather Service. And here’s a Bermuda TV station that supposedly offers a live RealVideo broadcast on its website. (I haven’t tried it yet.)

Quick… which one of these books is fictional? :)

It now appears that Hurricane Fabian’s right-hand turn away from the U.S. East Coast is going to be so abrupt, it may hit Bermuda. The latest National Hurricane Center forecast calls for a near-direct hit on the island by a potent, Category 3 Fabian with 120 mph winds on Friday evening.

This would be a bad thing.

A Hurricane Watch will probably be issued for Bermuda early tomorrow morning. “All interests in Bermuda should closely monitor the progress of Fabian,” the Hurricane Center says. Uh, yeah.

As for Fabian’s impact on the East Coast, it won’t be much — but, the NHC says, “Large swells will…begin to spread along portions of the east coast of the United States over the next day or two.” I don’t know if the big waves will reach Long Island, given how far south and east Fabian is staying, but we shall see.

There’s another storm to follow, too: Tropical Depression Twelve has formed in the Gulf of Mexico. It is stationary at the moment, but eventually it is expected to move over Florida and then back out into the Atlantic, whereupon it will probably follow Fabian out to sea — as the cold front that’s presently bringing chilly rain to the Northeast does us a favor by chasing not just one, but two, tropical systems away from the coast.

The Hurricane Center’s latest discussion of T.D. 12 contains this rather bad pun: “However…it appears that it will be roughly 24 hours or so before the depression can becomes ‘Henri the 8th’…tropical storm of the season.” Heh. Gotta love meteorologists’ humor.

But yeah, it would be Tropical Storm Henri if it reaches 40 mph. In a related story, a French guy named Henri is staying in the apartment this week and next. :)

The Yankees lose again, the Red Sox win again (in 10 innings), and lo and behold, despite losing 2 of 3 at Fenway last weekend, the Sox are within three games of the Yanks!!!

It looks like Joe Torre may have been right when he said “other games,” and not necessarily the Boston-New York showdowns, would decide the course of the AL East race.

Then again, if New York will just lose again to Toronto tomorrow, the Red Sox will enter this weekend’s three-game series just 2 1/2 games back, and thus will have a chance to take the division lead if they sweep! Who’d have thunk it? (By the way, I’m going to Saturday’s game with a friend from work. More on that as it gets closer.)

What’s more, the Sox are tied for the wild-card lead again, as the Mariners also lost today. What a great day in baseball! :)

My apologies to anyone who may have encountered a recent slew of comments containing links to a porn sites before I was able to delete them. I have banned the IP address that was producing those comments, so hopefully they will stop appearing now.

BrendanLoy.com’s rules on this subject are very clear: fake, attention-mongering lesbianism involving Madonna and Britney Spears is allowed; all other obscene content is banned! :)

It’s been a while since I’ve engaged fully in the ever-so-fun sport of making fun of radical anti-war fools, but seeing Elizabeth Birch on TV yesterday saying — with a straight face — that Iraqis would be happier, and therefore terrorism in Iraq would decrease, if only the United Nations were running the occupation… ah, that brought me back to the good old days of last spring.

And then, as if that weren’t enough, this came along to make my day. Opinion Journal’s Best of the Web column, back from a two-week hiatus, has this gem from Geoffrey Wheatcroft, a British anti-war writer:

Because the critics of the Bush administration and Blair government made themselves so ridiculous in the aftermath of 11th September, the proper case against the Iraq war was subsequently much weakened.

Hear, hear! And that is precisely why I have been so angry with the Left since 9/11: although I disagreed fiercely with liberals about Afghanistan and, after much consideration, ended up disagreeing with them about Iraq too, I feel very strongly that the liberal position must be represented by a strong, sane voice, especially in these troubled times. The world needs a rational Left, a Left that can be taken seriously, to keep in check those who would go too far if allowed to do so.

Unfortunately, the world does not have such a Left. Such liberals exist, of course, but they are not in the driver’s seat of the “movement” at the present time. And that’s more than a damn shame — it’s a danger. The John Ashcrofts and Paul Wolfowitzes will rule the world if they are made to look good in the eyes of the public by the idiocy of their opponents.

Anyway, Wheatcroft goes on:

Sane critics of Bush and Blair must have been embarrassed by the sheer emptiness of the Voices for Peace, one of the instant books which came out in autumn 2001, [which featured] Mark Steel, Ronan Bennett, Annie Lennox (”I’m sorry, but I just don’t get it”), George Monbiot (”Let’s make this the era of collateral repair”), Anita Roddick (”We must shift from a private greed to a public good”) and other usual or unusual suspects …

These unthinking “radicals” provoked more than just amusement mixed with irritation–they induced a sense of despair. They simply had nothing to say–as they showed when they were asked for more practical advice.

Yup. Speaking of which, what the hell is up with these signs I keep seeing all over New York that say “Bush Lies — Who Dies? — End the Occupation Now!” Let’s think about this for a second: haven’t liberals been saying for years that one of the biggest flaws in U.S. policy is that we embark on all sorts of foreign adventures and then just get up and leave, not caring enough about other countries to help them rebuild? And isn’t that exactly what liberals are now advocating by saying “End the Occupation Now”?

Saying “end the occupation now,” with no caviats or provisions or alternative suggestions, is exactly the same thing as saying, “Hand Iraq over to Shiite radicals and let it become a Taliban state.” There is no difference between the two statements, because the facts on the ground make it exceedingly clear that one would lead to the other.

Words have meanings, actions have consequences, and that is the true meaning of that particular set of words, because that would be the consequence of that particular action. I hope the anti-war crowd feels good about itself knowing that it is straightforwardly advocating a course of action that will destroy what chance there is left for freedom and equality in Iraq.

UPDATE: My dad comments that he doesn’t think the Shiites would successfully come to power if the U.S. were to up and leave. He proposes the following: “I think, hypothetically, that if we were to Declare Victory & Go Home while Saddam still lives — the Ba’ath would return to power, after a mighty civil war.” And maybe he’s right. That is at least a possibility, to be sure. So let me modify my above statement: those who cry “End the Occupation Now” are literally advocating a course of action that would almost certainly lead either to brutal rule by some brand of tyrants, or to a bloody civil war that would claim many civilian lives, or (quite possibly, indeed probably) both. And if they’re okay with that, well, I guess they’re beyond reason altogether.

My underlying point, of course, remains the same: words have meanings, actions have consequences, and liberals need to understand that the words “End the Occupation Now,” if followed through to their obvious and inevitable conclusion, would result in an absolutely awful situation for the Iraqi people, one way or the other — and everyone who stupidly advocated such an insane course of action would be morally culpable for the consequences if their wishes were to come true (just as liberals rightly hold America morally culpable for similar bad decisions in the past).

Anti-war folks are still free, of course, to blame George W. Bush for “getting us into this mess” in the first place. But that does not give them a free pass to advocate ways out of the “mess” that would make life immeasurably worse for the Iraqi people. (And they still need to account somehow for the fact that if Bush hadn’t gotten us into this mess, Saddam Hussein would still be in power.)

A giant asteroid could kill us all in eleven years. It probably won’t, though. But if the threat grows more serious, I say we amend the Constitution and elect the Terminator president. He’ll handle it.

If the Apocalypse is coming, remember, you heard about the first true sign of the End Times right here on BrendanLoy.com!

It was a rainy, relatively miserable day in New York today — but at night, it actually became quite pretty, as the city lights illuminated the clouds and mist.

The George Washington Bridge looked lovely, with its lights reflecting off both the water and the low clouds:

The Empire State Building also looked cool, though you couldn’t see its red, white, and blue lights very well:

In other news, Hurricane Fabian is down to “only” 135 mile-per-hour sustained winds.

The National Hurricane Center now seems quite confident Fabian will miss the U.S. altogether. The latest discussion makes no mention of the East Coast, saying only, “All interests in Bermuda should closely monitor the progress of Fabian.”

The NHC also says, intriguingly, “The most significant change has been an expansion of the core and outer circulation. The eye diameter today is about 30 [nautical miles]…compared to 20 nm yesterday. This suggests that Fabian may have some intensification left in it if the current eyewall contracts.” For now, it remains at 140 mph.

Fabian remains at 145 mph — a strong Category Four hurricane. Here is the latest forecast track:

If nothing else, this storm should produce some nice, big waves all up and down the East Coast, in which case you can plan on some audio- and photo-posts from the Long Island shore later in the week or this weekend. :)